A tribute to and catalogue of the works of Alexander "Hugin" Wieser, founder of ambient black metal band Uruk Hai and many other side-projects, including Hrossharsgrani, Hrefnesholt, Elisabetha, B-Machina, Ceremony of Innocence and more!
Here you will find my thoughts on his work and details on the releases as drawn from items in my personal collection, forming a fuller catalogue of his work than is currently available elsewhere online

Thursday, 19 December 2013

ATLANTIDA VOLUME 9 [V/A]

Band: HROSSHARSGRANI Title: Atlantida Volume 9 [V/A]Format: A CDr compilation in the Atlantida series of releases, released by Atlantida Productions (year unknown), masterminded by the late Ruslanas Danisevskis (Ravenclaw). Pro-printed black and white covers, with a plain silver disc, no other catalogue details.Edition:Unknown

The Atlantida series a whole contains a multitude of material, predominantly in the black/viking/gothic metal genres, and Volume 9 is fairly typical of it in terms of its content: A miscellany of demo tracks, songs from official releases, and the odd unreleased track just for this compilation. Some of the bands you've probably never heard of and doubtless may not again, others are rather more well-known in their respective fields: Thyfing, Lux Divina, Moonsorrow and Rossomahaar being instantly familiar to Nazgul. Being that Ruslanas was one half of Ravenclaw with Hugin, the presence of Hugin's bands (and indeed Ravenclaw themselves) across a number of these compilations is not surprising, and offers another rich vein of material for coverage on this Blog. And the odd surprise has arisen from Nazgul's perusal of the Atlantida discography, of which he will share more at a future juncture....!

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, and return now to Volume 9. The point of interest here is the inclusion of a version of 'Fimbulwinter' by Hrossharsgrani, a song that has graced more than a few demos from that band ("From The Dark Ages" and "Ancient Tales" being but two) as well as being released in a unique credit-card style format as a special gift to Nazgul. Depending on the version the song varies in length, but maintains a Viking-esque simplicity that belies the craft of our man on the keyboards. Its an early recording, one that the rear inlay of this CD denotes as an "unreleased track" just for this compilation, so the likelihood of it being an early variant of the piece is high.